All Forum Posts by: Daniel B.

I have a number of policies coming up for renewal early in the new year and thought it would be a good time to shop around a bit. I've searched the forums in the past and have tried Square One and Humberview based on recommendations from here but I haven't had great luck. 

I'm with Co-Operators for my home and rentals but I would be willing to move them all if I could find something a bit better. I'm currently paying about $80-$100/month for single families and about $70-$80/unit for multi-family. Maybe this is as good as it's going to get but I'm open to any suggestions.

I've also heard of a type of insurance where you have a single policy and it covers all the units (can't remember what it's called now). Would this be a possibility? 

Hey Jami, thanks for the perspective. We found similar things so it's good to have it corroborated. The higher down payment was just part of the stipulations for us. They also wanted an out of pocket assessment, higher interest rate, for us to be incorportated, etc. We'll be staying away from these places for now until we actually want to get one for commercial use.

Just to follow up on this the bank deemed the property commercial since it was zoned that way and would not allow us to finance it based on the residential usage.

Hi All, we're looking at a property that is zoned mixed use commercial/residential, but is currently being used as a full multi-family building with 3 units in it. 

We're currently waiting on financing from the bank, but I'm wondering if anyone knows whether or not this will be financed as commercial or residential or a mix, and if anyone has suggestions for a lender that will finance it as residential. We want to keep our down-payment/interest rates as low as possible for the deal to make sense so financing as commercial may be a deal-breaker.

@jacob perez, Thanks for that feedback- that all makes sense and I think I agree from a lending/accounting perspective. I think our biggest concern/push for incorporating would be to limit liability and de-risk personal assets. We're exploring using an umbrella insurance policy instead but are not sure if it would provide the same level of protection.

Hi all, my partner and I plan to grow our current portfolio of 5 units to roughly 25 units over the next 5 years and would like to figure out what the best structure would be to hold the properties from both a liabilty and tax filing perspective. I've read through a number of posts in this subforum but there doesn't seem to be the kind of consensus on the best approach that exists with LLCs in the states. As such, we would like to consult with a professional who can guide us in the right direction.

Can anyone recommend a good accountant/lawyer who is well versed in the area of real estate investment (more specifically the buy rent and hold model)?

Hi all, my partner and I currently own 3 properties, and are about to close on our 4th in a few months. We want to keep purchasing more properties, but have run out of the capital we need for down payments. Luckily we have friends and family who are interested in investing through us, but we're a bit stuck trying to sort out the best way to structure our investment vehicle.

We've talked to a lawyer and an accountant and the general advice seems to be to incorporate in Canada, and issue shares to investors, however we're not sure what kind of share structure to go with (how many different classes of shares, whether we should issue voting shares as well or just non-voting shares, in what form investors will see returns, etc). 

We're currently looking for a new lawyer (open to recommendations in the GTA), but were hoping to get some tips from anyone who's done something similar on here perhaps. The plan is to incorporate in the next month or so and have the 4th property mentioned earlier under the corporations name, and then use investment money to buy as many more properties as the friends and family money allows before branching out to bigger investors.